Secondaries: qualifiers, windows, tracking

IntermediateDuration ~27 min video + 60 min hands-onTools DaVinci Resolve (free)

Why this lesson

So far every move has hit the whole frame. But real notes are local: “warm her face, not the wall,” “make the sky bluer, leave the plane,” “that product is the wrong red.” Secondaries are how you isolate one part of the image and grade only that — and the difference between an amateur and a professional secondary is almost never the color change. It is the edge. A key that speckles and shimmers frame to frame (“chatter”), a window that lags behind a moving subject, a hard line where the grade stops — those are the tells. This lesson is the secondary toolkit and, more importantly, the discipline of the clean, quiet edge.

Watch

Segment: 1:06:27–1:33:50 — Windows, qualifiers, tracking, vignettes, outside nodeswatch full video

Watch for: Daria runs the whole secondary toolkit end to end. Watch her draw a circular power window on the swinging scales and convert it to Bézier for a custom shape (~1:09), soften the edge so the boundary vanishes, then track it so the window follows the swing (~1:14). Then the qualifier: she click-drags across green water to sample a wide HSL range, checks it in highlight black-and-white mode, and cleans the matte with denoise, clean black, clean white and blur (~1:20). Finally the outside node — one click that inverts the water key so she can grade the birds instead (~1:28) — plus a subtractive window to carve the plane out of that selection. Note the vignette built from an inverted, heavily softened window.

The explainer

Secondaries come in two families, and everything else hangs off them.

Power windows — isolate by shape. A power window is a shape you draw on the frame: a circle, a linear gradient, or a custom curve. Drop it on a face, a product, the corners of the frame, and only that region is graded. Drag the handles to size it, convert it to Bézier for an exact custom outline, and — critical — soften the edge so no one can see where the grade stops. Invert a big, heavily softened circle and you have a vignette: darken only the frame’s edges to pull the eye to center. Keep vignettes subtle; the moment you notice one, it is too strong.

Qualifiers — isolate by color. A qualifier, or HSL key, selects by hue, saturation and luminance instead of shape — perfect when the target has a distinct color, like skin, a sky, or that green water. Click-drag across the subject to sample a range (one click grabs too little), then switch the viewer to highlight black-and-white to see the matte honestly: white is selected, black is not. Now the real work — killing chatter. Use the matte finesse controls: denoise to clear speckle, clean black and clean white to knock out stray flecks, blur radius to soften the edge. Two habits keep keys clean: denoise the plate before you key (noise wrecks a matte), and place the secondary right after your balance node so you are keying the cleanest, truest version of the signal.

The 3D keyer — a cleaner selector. For tricky selections the 3D keyer often beats the HSL qualifier. Instead of three sliders you paint samples, and it keys in a 3D color space with four modes: soft (gentle fall-off, the default choice), flat, tight (a strict, precise cut), and luma. It shares the same finesse tools, so you clean the edge exactly as above. Reach for it when the HSL key fights you on skin.

Tracking and keyframes — make it hold over time. A window pinned to frame one is useless the moment the subject moves. The tracker fixes that: with the window in place, click analyze forward and it follows the motion (Resolve 17 and later can track forward and backward from the middle of a clip in one pass). When motion is too complex for the tracker — a subject that turns or occludes — you keyframe the window by hand: set its position at a few points in time and Resolve interpolates between them. Track what you can, keyframe what you must.

The outside node. Once you have a selection, grading its opposite is one click: add an outside node and Resolve inverts the current node’s key for you. Keyed the water? An outside node hands you everything-but-the-water so you can grade the birds — no rebuilding the selection inverted. You can then trim it further with a subtractive window.

The modern shortcut: Magic Mask. For people and features, Resolve’s AI Magic Mask replaces the hand-drawn, hand-tracked window entirely — paint a stroke on a person and it recognizes and tracks torso, limbs, hair, or a specific face, even through foreground objects. It is covered in the go-deeper video and is often the fastest route for a human subject.

Do it

1. Take a shot from your matched scene in 2.3. Add a secondary node right after the balance node.
2. Power window: drop a circle on a face or product, convert to Bézier if the shape needs it, grade inside it, then soften the edge until the boundary is invisible.
3. Track it: with the window in place, analyze forward. Scrub back and check it holds. Where it slips, add a keyframe and correct by hand.
4. Qualifier: on a new node, click-drag across a distinct color (sky, skin, a prop). View it in highlight black-and-white and clean the matte — denoise, clean black, clean white, a touch of blur — until there is no chatter.
5. 3D keyer: rebuild that same selection with the 3D keyer in soft mode and compare which gives the cleaner edge.
6. Outside node: add one and grade everything except your selection.
7. Vignette: an inverted, heavily softened circle window; darken the edges just until you cannot see it, then back off. Toggle the whole grade (Shift-D) and screenshot before/after.

Node recipes — where secondary, outside and vignette nodes sit in the treenode-recipes-l1.pdf161 KBOriginal course material — free to useSecondaries & curves recipes — qualifier/window/tracking recipes and cleanup stepssecondaries-recipes.pdf109 KBOriginal course material — free to useLevel 2 workbook — every Do it exercise, 2.1–2.12, plus the capstone (printable)level-2-workbook.pdf799 KBOriginal course material — free to use

Terms introduced

Terms introduced in this lesson

• Power window
• Qualifier (HSL key)
• 3D keyer
• Tracker
• Keyframe

Each term links to the glossary, where it is defined by the way you just used it.

Check

Check yourself

1. What is the difference between a power window and a qualifier?

   A power window is for stills; a qualifier is for videoThey are two names for the same toolA power window isolates by shape; a qualifier isolates by color (hue, saturation, luminance)A power window isolates by color; a qualifier isolates by shape

2. Your skin key is crawling with speckle and the edge shimmers frame to frame. What fixes "chatter"?

   Turn the key off and grade the whole frameClean the matte with the finesse controls — denoise, clean black/white, blur — and denoise before keyingRaise the saturation of the whole imageAdd a second qualifier on top

3. A window sits perfectly on a subject on frame one, but the subject moves. What makes the window follow?

   Nothing; you must redraw it each frameThe tracker — analyze forward and the window follows the motionA keyframe on every frameThe qualifier

4. You have keyed green water and want to grade everything EXCEPT the water. What is the quickest route?

   Delete the qualifierUse a keyframeAdd an outside node, which inverts the current node's key automaticallyRebuild the whole selection inverted by hand

Check answers

You can move on when you can… isolate a subject two ways — a tracked, softened power window and a clean qualifier or 3D key with no chatter — grade only that region, flip to an outside node to grade the rest, and build a vignette no viewer would ever spot.

Mark this lesson complete

Go deeper

Daria — Magic Mask (Blackmagic advanced color): the AI alternative to hand-drawn windows. Paint a short stroke on a person and Magic Mask isolates and tracks them automatically — torso, limbs, hair — or, in features mode, an individual face plus the neck. Watch the quality (faster vs. better), smart refine, and blur-radius controls that clean the edge.

Segment: 31:29–41:16 — Magic Mask: AI person/feature isolationwatch full video

Watch for: Painting a stroke, toggle mask overlay, analyze forward, the quality faster/better trade-off, smart refine to tighten the edge, blur radius to soften the grade, and inverting the mask to grade the world around the subject.

Waqas Qazi — building a clean skin qualifier and the 3D keyer modes: the deep version of edge discipline on the hardest target there is, skin. How to walk the hue-width, center, saturation and luminance controls, then finesse with post-filter, denoise, clean white and clean black — and when the 3D keyer’s soft/flat/tight/luma modes beat the HSL qualifier.

Segment: 14:06–23:08 — Building a clean skin qualifier + 3D keyer modeswatch full video

Watch for: The exact order for a clean skin key (hue width and center, then saturation, then luminance), the four matte-finesse controls that kill chatter, and the 3D keyer's soft, flat, tight and luma modes with chroma tolerance and softness.

Vince (SDI) — tracking and the shared node: forward-and-reverse tracking from the middle of a clip, and the “don’t stack problems” discipline — fix a fault where it originates rather than piling corrective nodes on top, which is exactly what keeps secondaries clean across a whole timeline.

Watch for: Building a noise-reduction shared node you can toggle across every clip at once, the Resolve 17 track-forward-and-backward button, and why you fix problems at the source instead of stacking more nodes.

Next up: 2.5 · The curves family — the precision tools for shaping hue, saturation and luma without a mask.